It’s not a pretty thing when a Senate report details gruesome torture by the CIA and the agency’s lies to Congress about it. Not pretty when the usual party sharpshooters on both sides turn the report into a political football. Not pretty when a former vice president terms the report “hooey.”

It’s not pretty when an unarmed black man dies at the hands of a white policeman. Not pretty when, although authorities attempted to use the justice system and due process, people protest “no-indict” decisions by grand juries with riots that destroy the property of innocent bystanders. Not pretty when observers who have no involvement at all with these cases react with all-or-nothing diatribes.

It is ugly as sin to watch things far worse than these: the barbarisms practiced abroad by Islamic fundamentalists, the sufferings of nations ravaged by Ebola and poverty, the melting of the glaciers.

It is hard to see beyond the ugly. But in this season of light...